The justice minister has refused to send to the United States a request for the arrest and extradition of 22 purported CIA agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003, the ministry said Wednesday. Justice Minister Roberto Castelli told prosecutors who have accused the Americans that he had decided against forwarding their request to Washington, a ministry statement said. Castelli, who previously called the prosecutor "anti-American," had indicated he was unwilling to press the case, which had already damaged U.S.-Italian relations. It was unclear whether the prosecutors' extradition request would be forwarded to Washington by a new government, expected to be headed by the center-left after parliamentary elections held Sunday and Monday. ... http://www.usatoday.com

With Massachusetts basking in the national spotlight for its sweeping proposal to require all citizens to have health insurance, Gov. Mitt Romney has signaled he will sign the bill into law — with one change.At a lavish signing ceremony set for Wednesday, Romney was expected to veto or significantly alter a key portion of the bill: a $295-per-worker assessment for businesses that do not provide health insurance. Some critics call that a tax on businesses. "It's a very small feature of this bill. It's a very insignificant and unnecessary and, in some respects, counterproductive element of this bill," Romney told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "It applies to a tiny number of employers, and it raises a very small amount of money relative to the scale of this entire proposal. So I don't think it's necessary."...http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-12-mass-heath_x.htm

Credit and debit card fees levied on businesses and consumers are pushing up prices by about 2.5% across the EU, the European Commission has said. Depending on where customers live in the EU, they could pay up to double in annual fees for a Visa or Mastercard. Likewise, the fee banks levy on business for processing a credit card transaction - also varies widely across the EU. The EU Competition Commission said the card market lacked competition. "The payment cards industry in Europe remains national and some local players are preventing competition from developing," said Neelie Kroes, the EU's competition commissioner. "This pushes up payment card costs for consumers and businesses," Ms Kroes added. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4903422.stm

China has made a number of trade concessions to the US ahead of President Hu Jintao's visit next week. Eager to smooth the way before Mr Hu's trip, Beijing has agreed to remove its ban on US beef and make it easier for US firms to bid for public contracts. Also promising to clamp down on pirated goods, China's Vice-Premier Wu Yi made the pledges at talks in Washington. It was separately announced that China is buying 80 additional 737 planes from US giant Boeing worth $4.6bn (£2.6bn). US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez welcomed the successes of the latest Sino-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting, but cautioned that proof would be in the implementation. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4901858.stm

An audit of Nigeria's oil industry has found giant gaps between the amount of tax that firms say they paid and what authorities say they received. The discrepancies - totalling hundreds of millions of dollars - have been discovered by a government-backed anti-corruption agency. Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) looked at payments from 1999 to 2004. Its report stopped short of saying what might have happened to the cash. "We found some strange situations," said Chris Nurse, managing director of audit firm Hart, which carried out the study for the NEITI. "For the year 2002, there were $250m (£142m) that the companies say they paid to the central bank that do not appear in central bank records." Mr Nurse added that there were also discrepancies between figures provided by different arms of the government, and that accounting standards were low across the board. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4902474.stm

Authorities say two Goldman Sachs employees made more than $6.7 million through insider trading by enlisting an analyst who provided information on Wall Street deals and a forklift driver who leaked copies of a market-moving magazine. Prosecutors called it one of the most extensive insider trading cases in decades, and it has no shortage of salacious details. The case includes allegations that the men tried to get strippers to coax stock tips from investment bankers who had inside knowledge of pending mergers and acquisitions. "We've never seen before a case involving so many different attempts to obtain information illegally," said Mark Schonfeld, regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which brought civil charges against 13 people. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/12/business/main1491229.shtml?source=RSS&attr=U.S._1491229